Secular state and Related Topics

State religion

Religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state.

A state with an official religion (also known as confessional state), while not secular, is not necessarily a theocracy.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was a major advocate of the Charter.

The building of the Supreme Court of Canada, the chief authority on the interpretation of the Charter

The United States Bill of Rights influenced the text of the Charter, but its rights provisions are interpreted more conservatively. Canadian civil-rights and constitutional cases as compared to American cases occasionally have dissimilar outcomes because the broader Charter rights are limited by the "savings clause" of section 1 of the Charter as interpreted in R v Oakes

The "March of Hearts" rally for same-sex marriage equality under the Charter in 2004.

Section 2: lists what the Charter calls "fundamental freedoms" namely freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and of other media of communication, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association. In case law, this clause is cited as the reason for the religious neutrality of the state.

Sierra Leone

Country on the southwest coast of West Africa.

Fragments of prehistoric pottery from Kamabai Rock Shelter

Bunce Island, 1805, during the period the slave factory was run by John and Alexander Anderson

An 1835 illustration of liberated Africans arriving in Sierra Leone

Houses at Sierra-Leone (May 1853, X, p.55)

Bai Bureh, Temne leader of the Hut Tax War of 1898 against British rule

Temne leader Bai Bureh seen here in 1898 after his surrender, sitting relaxed in his traditional dress with a handkerchief in his hands, while a Sierra Leonean Royal West African Frontier soldier stands guard next to him

Moa River Bridge, Sierra Leone. Lisk-Carew Brothers, Freetown, Sierra Leone

British West African Campaign troops in Freetown, 1914–1916. Published caption: "British expeditionary force preparing to embark at Freetown to attack the German Cameroons, the main object of the attack being the port of Duala. Auxiliary native troops were freely used in African warfare."

African Naval ratings march past the Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Hubert Stevenson.

An APC political rally in the northern town of Kabala outside the home of supporters of the rival SLPP in 1968

A school in Koindu destroyed during the Civil War; in total 1,270 primary schools were destroyed in the War.

Sierra Leone map of Köppen climate classification

The Sierra Leone Supreme Court in the capital Freetown, the highest and most powerful court in the country

The 14 districts and 2 areas of Sierra Leone

A proportional representation of Sierra Leone exports, 2019

A farmer with his rice harvest in Sierra Leone. Two-thirds of Sierra Leone's population are directly involved in subsistence agriculture.

The road from Kenema to Kailahun District

Sierra Leone's total population, from 1961 to 2013

The distribution of major ethnic groups within Sierra Leone

A secondary school class in Pendembu, Kailahun District

A situation map of the Ebola outbreak as of 8 August 2014

Isata Mahoi shown editing radio programmes in Talking Drum studio Freetown; she is also an actress in the Sierra Leone radio soap opera Atunda Ayenda

Odelay mask by Temne people. Brooklyn Museum.

Sierra Leone is a secular nation with the constitution providing for the separation of state and religion and freedom of conscience (which includes freedom of thoughts and religion).

Separation of church and state

Philosophic and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state.

Antichristus, a woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder of the pope using the temporal power to grant authority to a generously contributing ruler

John Locke, English political philosopher argued for individual conscience, free from state control.

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, whose letter to the Danbury Baptists Association is often quoted in debates regarding the separation of church and state

H. B. Higgins, proponent of Section 116 in the Australian pre-Federation constitutional conventions

Rui Barbosa had a large influence upon the text adopted as the 1891 Constitution of Brazil.

"Constitution no. 1", which is kept in the great hall of the Palace of the Constitutional Court and is used on the occasion of the presidential inauguration

Motto of the French republic on the tympanum of a church in Aups, Var département, which was installed after the 1905 law on the Separation of the State and the Church. Such inscriptions on a church are very rare; this one was restored during the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution.

Courtroom with Crucifix in Nuremberg, Germany, June 2016

James Madison, drafter of the Bill of Rights

Thomas Jefferson's tombstone. The inscription, as he stipulated, reads, "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of ... the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom ...."

Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state (with or without legally explicit church-state separation) and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state.